This application makes reference to, incorporates the same herein, and claims all benefits accruing under 35 U.S.C. xc2xa7119 from an application for A AUTOMATIC INSERTION MACHINE FOR RETURN BEND PIPE OF HEAT EXCHANGER earlier filed in the Korean Industrial Property Office on Sep. 8, 1999 and there duly assigned Serial No. 38152/1999.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic assembling apparatus of automatically assembling return bends and hair pins in a heat exchanger, and more particularly to an automatic assembling apparatus of automatically inserting the return bends into the hair pins mounted in a plurality of flat plate fins in a heat exchanger.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Return bends are inserted into corresponding hair pins for forming a passageway of a coolant circulating the hair pins mounted in the flat plate fins of a heat exchanger. The return bends had been manually arranged with and inserted into the hair pins. This manual assembling process causes misalignment and inaccurate coupling of hair pins and return bends during assembling of a heat exchanger.
As shown in FIG. 1, a heat exchanger 1 generally includes a plurality of flat plate pins 10 arranged in parallel to an air flowing direction and spaced-apart from each other by a first predetermined interval for allowing air to pass through between the flat plate fins, a plurality of hair pins 12 inserted into holes formed on the flat plate fins 10 and mounted in perpendicular to the flat plat fins by a predetermined horizontal interval for allowing coolant to circulate therein, and a plurality of return bends 14 respectively coupled to a pair of ends 12a of the hair pins to form a single coolant pass line.
In a conventional method of inserting return bends 14 to hair pins 12 of the heat exchanger 1, after a plurality of hair pins 12 have been assembled with a plurality of flat plat fins 10, ends 14b of each return bend are manually matched with ends 12a of hair pins 12 and forcibly inserted into ends 12a of hair pins by a rubber hammer by a predetermined length.
However, there has been problems in a conventional method of manually inserting return bends 14 into hair pins 12 and manually assembling the heat exchanger 1 such as inefficiency due to workers"" fatigue. Return bends 14 are neither accurately aligned with hair pins 12 nor inserted into hair pins by a uniform length to thereby increase a number of defects and consume a lot of time in assembling the return bends and hair pins. These problems of the conventional method prevent a mass production.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an automatic assembling apparatus able to automatically and simultaneously assemble a plurality of return bends and a plurality of hair pins in a heat exchanger.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an automatic assembling apparatus able to automatically align the return bend and the hair pin.
It is yet another object to provide an automatic assembling apparatus able to automatically and precisely insert the return bend into the hair pin.
It is still another object to provide an automatic assembling apparatus able to accurately coupling the return bend and the hair pin.
It is a further object to provide an automatic assembling apparatus able to prevent defects on the return bend and the hair pin and the deterioration of the coolant flow passing through the return bend and the hair pin.
It is also object to provide a heat exchanger assembling apparatus able to increase the efficiency of the heat exchanger by reducing assembling time and suitable to a mass production of the heat exchanger.
These and other objects may be achieved by providing an automatic assembling apparatus including a heat exchanger transferring unit clamping both lateral sides of the heat exchanger having the hair pins and flat plat fins and horizontally transferring the heat exchanger on a working station, a bend inserting unit installed at one end of the heat exchanger transferring unit and coupling the return bends into the hair pins, a transferring member installed in rear of a supporting frame for horizontally transferring the heat exchanger, and a clamping member connected to the transferring member and clamping and maintaining the heat exchanger in a predetermined height.
The bend inserting unit includes first and second return bend supplying member installed at both upper ends of a main body and accommodating and supplying the return bends one after another and a bend inserting member installed on a center of a lower end on a front lateral surface of the main body and clamping the return bends respectively supplied from the first and second bend supplying member and coupling return bends to the hair pins.